Til I Get My Way
by Mrs.Monster
Summary: Rebecca Sumpter thought that Wisconsin could pretty much bite her ass. Daryl and Rebecca attempt to settle into a normal life. As normal as life can get in the zombie apocalypse, anyway. Sequel to Act Nice and Gentle.
1. Chapter 1

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to The Walking Dead. No copyright infringement intended.**_

_**Author's Note: Alright. So, it's a little late. (cough) overayear (cough). But hey, holy hell, I'm actually following through on a sequel. I've got a few more chapters already written up for this, and while I can't promise regular updates, I'm hoping that there won't be any huge gaps. **_

_**I really hope that you like where I'm taking this, and what I've done. This first chapter is a bit short, but other's will be longer.) **_

_**'Til I Get My Way**_

_**Chapter One**_

Rebecca Sumpter thought that Wisconsin could pretty much bite her ass. It was only the beginning of October and it was already colder than she'd expected, and she thought that if Daryl didn't find a place he deemed suitable soon, she was going to feed him to a group of walkers. Or maybe just kick him. The latter seemed more likely.

They'd crossed the Wisconsin border nearly two weeks ago, and they'd been driving around the state since then, looking for a place to bunker down for the winter. Rebecca couldn't count how many houses they'd come across, and every time, Daryl would find something wrong with it. The structure was too weak; there was no way to rig any type of water system; they wouldn't be able to keep it heated. One thing after another. Rebecca knew that he was just trying to keep them safe, and she loved him even more for it, but it was beginning to wear on her nerves.

A low fire burned, red embers stark against the dead black night. Rebecca shivered, pulling her blanket tighter around her body. Breath plumed in silver clouds, and she held a .38 pistol firmly under the blanket in her left hand, keeping the fabric around her cold body with her right. She wished that Daryl would hurry back; the man was like a human furnace. Not to mention the fact that she didn't particularly like being alone at night- not that she ever would admit it. It wasn't that she was afraid _per se_, there hadn't been any walker sightings where they were camped. At least not as long as they'd been there. Rebecca was more uneasy; the forest of trees was so dark at night that she couldn't see a foot beyond the illumination of the small fire.

Regardless of the fact that they hadn't seen any walkers in this area didn't mean that they wouldn't wander their way toward the smell of fresh flesh, no matter how faint or far away it may be.

As if on cue something rustled in the forest behind her. Rebecca sat straighter against the tree she had to her back, many layers of clothing protecting her from the rough bark. Her hand tightened around the cold metal of the pistol as she brought it out from under her blanket. She kept the barrel pointed at the ground, but she was at the ready and on her feet at the next rustle.

Rebecca could hear the moaning now, the grunts and the groaning. Only hearing one, she stuffed her pistol into the back of her jeans, not wanting to draw more with the loud report. She remained completely calm as she dug through their supplies for the ax they used to cut firewood. This was familiar now; those moments of panic at seeing the dead up and walking about were rarely there anymore, unless it was a horde. That would get the blood pumping, the heart beating, the adrenaline flowing.

Gripping the wooden handle of the ax, worn smooth from years of use, Rebecca pressed herself against the tree, waiting for it to come into sight. What was once a man shambled through the trees, rough tree bark shredding rotting clumps of flesh from its exposed skin. It limped on it's only good leg, the other twisted to the side. Half his face was missing; white bone of the skull showed through, the left orbital socket empty and black.

The thick stench filled the area, and Rebecca moved forward silently, ax over her shoulder like a ball player ready to knock one out of the park.

Remaining eye fixed on her, the walker shifted its trajectory toward her and Rebecca waited for the thing to come to her.

_Batter up, _she thought when it was close enough, and the sharp blade swung through the air, impacting with a heavy _thunk _and an arc of stagnant blood.

Owing to Rebecca's small stature, she hadn't swung hard enough to cut clean through the bone and sinew and muscle. A small shiver of disgust found her when she jerked the blade of the ax free, and the walker's head flopped to the side as it still reached for her.

The second strike did the job and the body fell lifeless as the head rolled, still snarling and snapping. Rebecca regarded it for a moment, watching it blink and spin its eye, trying to lock onto her. With no hesitation, she pulled the pistol from her jeans, jammed the barrel into the empty eye socket and pulled the trigger. The shot was muffled, and the head jerked with the gun, brain matter spattering the nearly dead forest floor.

Rebecca stuffed the gun back into her waistband, the barrel hot against her skin.

"Now where to burn you..." she said lowly, speaking to the now un-animated corpse. She didn't want to attract more with a large fire, so that meant dragging the body away from their camp. Rebecca briefly considered just waiting for Daryl, but dismissed the notion with the next deep breath that took the stink of rot all the way to the bottom of her lungs.

She felt as if she'd been walking for miles when she finally found a decent spot, away from the overhang of trees. Flames licked at her back as she let it burn, and turned to find her way back to camp.

"Rebecca!" she heard his heavily accented voice yelling, and she rushed a little faster. "Rebecca!"

As soon as she stepped foot in camp, she was swept into his arms, pulled tight against his firm chest.

"Where were you? What happened? Did you get bit? What-"

"Daryl, calm down. I'm fine. There was only one of them." Rebecca pried his hands from where he'd been frantically checking her for injuries. "I dragged it away from camp to burn it."

"I came back and you weren't here, and I saw blood, and-"

"I'm alright. See?" Rebecca took Daryl's hands and brought them to her face. "Fine."

Regardless, Daryl kept a tight hold on her hand for the rest of the night.


	2. Chapter 2

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to The Walking Dead. No copyright infringement intended. **_

_**Author's Note: Second sequel chapter. Thanks to my one reviewer for chapter one!)**_

_**Til I Get My Way**_

_**Chapter Two**_

It took them another week to find it. A two story farmhouse, surrounded by flattened fields and a large barn about half a mile away from the house. There was a large kitchen with a stone-hearth fireplace that would easily provide warmth, the pipes were well insulated and ran little chance of freezing, and Daryl even found a generator in the basement that would provide hot water.

They also found a family rotting in an upstairs bedroom. A man, a woman and two children; one that appeared to be a teenage girl and the other a small boy. Clouds of fat flies roared and swarmed, sustained past their season by the smorgasbord of flesh. The stench was as physical as the flies and hit Rebecca like a fist, when she made the grizzly discovery.

They wrapped the family in sheets found in a hallway closet, starting with the children. Not a word was passed between Daryl and Rebecca as they carried them one by one down the stairs and out of the house, making a pyre at the very edge of the west field. They went back for what Rebecca assumed was the mother of the two children; when they lifted, something fell from the sloppy funeral dressings. It hit the ground with a sound like dead leaves, and Rebecca motioned for Daryl to set the corpse down so that she could get a better look. What she saw made her eyes well with tears and her stomach swirl with horror.

It was a baby, still connected to the mother by an umbilical cord. She must have been pregnant when the family had taken the Other Option.

"Oh God." Rebecca swayed where she was kneeling.

Daryl caught her arm from behind and pulled her up and against him. "Don't look at it anymore," he said, his voice low and Rebecca knew that the sight had affected even him.

Daryl carried the woman's corpse down on his own, and Rebecca busied herself wrapping the remaining body. She thought that it would be a long time before she was able to close her eyes without seeing the tiny, barely formed skeleton.

**...**

Rebecca spent most of their second day in the house scrubbing out the upstairs bedroom while Daryl double checked the pipes, the roof, the well and plotted out a space for a garden. He'd told her that they wouldn't be able to plant anything now, but when spring came they should be able to till a decent sized plot for tomatoes, corn, beans, potatoes and maybe even strawberries.

The bedroom had been the boy's, painted a slate gray with pictures of airplanes on the walls. She'd broken down the twin bed and moved it and the rocking chair and four drawer dresser down to the basement, and scrubbed blood off the walls and carpets until she was bleeding herself, knuckles cracked and red. The room smelled of the bleach she'd found under the kitchen sink when she finally closed the door, content to let it stay closed for however long they would be there.

The rest of the farmhouse seemed miraculously untouched. There was another bedroom upstairs that had belonged to the girl, and one downstairs that the parent's had used. The kitchen was large, with enough space that she and Daryl would be able to fit the sofa from the living room in there this winter, limiting themselves to the one room and the bathroom.

The bathroom. Running water and indoor plumbing. Rebecca could barely believe it. She'd flushed the toilet so many times when they'd first found the place, just for the sheer joy of _doing_ it, that Daryl teased her about the well running dry.

"Rebecca! Come down here!"

Rebecca had been hanging blankets across both kitchen doorways in order to trap the heat inside when Daryl called to her from the basement. She climbed off her ladder, set the hammer on the counter and took the nails from between her teeth.

She found Daryl in a small room off the basement, inspecting shelves full of jars.

"Look at this. They must have been canning for winter before they took the easy way out."

Rebecca blanched a little at his callous attitude, but she was almost used to it by now. She moved closer to the shelves and found that the jars were full vegetables, fruits, pickles and jams. Not enough to last all winter, but at least a month, possibly two if they stretched it. Rebecca gave Daryl a smile, as big as she could muster.

"What's wrong? You're bein' quiet." Daryl came up behind her, slipping his arms around her middle, resting his chin on her shoulder. His stubble scratched through her long sleeved shirt, and she rested her head against his.

"Nothing's wrong, I'm just... tired." And she was. She felt dragged down, exhausted. Like she could crawl into one of these beds and hibernate all winter long.

"You're not gettin' sick, are you?"

"I don't think so." She turned in Daryl's arms and kissed him softly. "I just want to get our place set up, and then maybe sleep for a month. Or two." She smiled, kissed him again and left the basement.

**...**

"I found a cow."

Daryl paused, canteen full of water almost to his lips, and looked at Rebecca. "A cow?"

She was deadpanned. "Yeah, it was wandering out in the east pasture."

"Are you being serious? Or are you fucking with me again, like when you convinced me that el chupicabra was real?"

Rebecca laughed at the memory. "Oh yeah. That was hilarious. But seriously. I put the cow in the garage."

Daryl took a swig of water and followed her to the small garage that was attached to the house. He'd been fortifying the fences in the west pasture, building them higher, stronger, against any type of intruder. Living, dead or otherwise.

Sure enough, closed up in the garage was a black and white heifer. It was thin, but far from the point of starvation.

Daryl was hesitant.

"It's going to be hard enough just feeding us."

"Yeah, I know, but... milk, Daryl. And cheese. We could make cheese."

"Making cheese is a pain in the ass."

"Really?"

Daryl nodded. But then he added, "Ice cream. Me and Merle used to make ice cream with our Mom from milk and snow in winter."

Rebecca threaded her fingers through his, gave his hand a tight squeeze. "Daryl?"

He shook his head slightly, bringing himself back from some memory. "Yeah?"

"We're keeping the cow."

"Alright."


	3. Chapter 3

_**(Discliamer: I own nothing related to The Walking Dead. No copyright infringement intended. **_

_**Author's Note: Sorry for the long gap between chapters. There are a multitude of reasons, but I won't bore you with the details. Thanks for the many awesome reviews, and I hope that you don't want to kill me after reading this.) **_

_**Til I Get My Way**_

_**Chapter Three **_

That night Daryl build a fire in the grate and they made a bed on the kitchen floor with the mattress and bedding from the downstairs bedroom. The flames crackled and popped and with Daryl curled against her back, Rebecca thought that it was the most relaxed she'd been since she'd left New York.

Daryl was playing with her hair, fingers sifting through the long strands as she timed her breaths with his.

"Daryl?"

"Yeah?"

Rebecca was hesitant, but forged ahead. "What happened to your Mom? You never say anything about her."

"Nothin' to say." He was still behind her.

After a few minutes of silence, Rebecca said, "I told you about my father-"

"So what? We swappin' pity stories now?"

Rebecca winced in the dark.

A beat of quiet, and then Daryl said, "Sorry I snapped."

"It's alright."

The blaze in the grate popped loudly, and it cast an orange glow across the room, making Rebecca's red hair seem on fire.

"She left. I was little, but still old enough to remember her packing, leaving me and Merle behind. Maybe six? Packed her stuff in the middle of the day while the old man was at work, left before he got home. She was a good Ma, but she just couldn't handle him, I guess."

Rebecca bit her tongue to hold back her reply of, _Good mother's don't leave their children to fend by themselves. Not willingly anyway. _Her history and Daryl's were horribly similar, but her mother would have _never _left her alone with Gary Sumpter by her own choice. She didn't want to say any of this to Daryl, though. If his mother held the only good memories of his childhood, she would be damned if she would be the one to ruin them.

Daryl's heavy, calloused palm brushed up her side, under her top, curling around the underside of her left breast. He kissed the curve of her shoulder and neck, then settled.

**...**

Rebecca showered, dressed, and did one of the things she'd been dreading.

Squatting in the dead family's house seemed so much less invasive than scavenging through their things, their personal items, but it had to be done. They needed warm clothes for winter, and there was no room for such morals in this new world. Whatever had to be done to survive, was done, to a certain point.

She left the girl's room upstairs untouched. In the downstairs bedroom she found that while the woman who'd lived here had been much taller than her own slight frame, the man had been roughly the same size as Daryl. Rebecca set aside jeans, thermals, t-shirts and a few pairs of heavy socks. The woman's clothes could be hemmed, and if Rebecca didn't find any sewing supplies in the house, she could get some on their supply run into town. She didn't know the first thing about sewing, but learning to stitch a seam could come in handy for more than hemming and patching clothing.

The clothing was good quality, and layering could be their saving grace come winter. The more personal items, like jewelry, keep-sakes and cosmetics, Rebecca packed away. They would have no use for it. She closed up the bedroom, knowing it would stay that way through the cold weather, and carted her finds to the kitchen.

Rebecca looked out the window and spotted Daryl outside working on the fence, hammering and sawing, working up a sweat in spite of the chill in the air. It was almost November, and their second holiday since the world ended was fast approaching. The first had been the fourth of July, and there hadn't seemed to be much to celebrate then either. Thanksgiving; what did they have to be thankful for?

Each other. The place they had found. Being alive when so many others had died, suffering and in pain.

Maybe they should celebrate after all.

**...**

They found a super Target in a town about ten miles away. Only with some of the letters on the sign missing, the front of the store read SUPER TART. Rebecca snorted a laugh and shrugged off the look she got from Daryl, who apparently did not get the joke. He parked the truck across the sidewalk directly in front of the entrance and pried the sliding doors open.

The store had been picked pretty clean, but Rebecca found what she needed to alter the clothing she'd found earlier that day, and went in search of paper products. While Daryl may have been content to wipe with oak leaves, Rebecca wasn't going to go without unless it was absolutely imperative. She dumped packages of Charmin into the large black trash bag she was carrying, and had absently picked up a box of tampons. She froze, staring at the blue package in her hand.

When had she last had a period? Rebecca racked her mind, but couldn't remember having a period since they'd been camped by the quarry. So around two months, maybe three. Something heavy swooped in her middle, and her stomach churned greasy. She couldn't be pregnant- they'd been careful, mostly, but there had been a few times when they'd been out of condoms and things had gotten heated, neither of them really thinking clearly.

Rebecca dropped the bag, the box of tampons hit the floor and she had to brace herself against the aluminum shelf in the darkened store. They'd had unprotected sex; she could very well be pregnant. How could they be so _stupid_? Of course, Rebecca knew that there were several other things that could cause her to miss periods.

Like malnutrition. Rebecca couldn't remember having a full belly since the first night at the CDC. Stress; there was plenty of that, now that survival was an actual concern. Both of those were factors to be considered, however...

Shakily, Rebecca gathered the bag, plastic crinkling loudly in her hand, and left the blue box laying on the floor. She searched for the pharmacy.

Rebecca had never thought about having children. She and Daryl had never discussed it; what kind of moron plans a family after the world ended? Babies had always made her uncomfortable at best, and back in New York, she'd been so career oriented that she'd never considered it a possibility. And if she were perfectly honest with herself, she preferred it that way. Because if there was even an _ounce _of her father in her, she wasn't going to risk it. She would rather die than put a child through that, and if she had a baby _now_, in _this _world? It was almost indefensible.

She heard Daryl trying to find her in another part of the store, and she answered, telling him that se was in the pharmacy. An array of boxes seemed to leer at her from the shelves. Apparently pregnancy tests weren't a hot ticket item when one was stocking up for the apocalypse.

"Hey, did you find anything... what's goin' on?"

"Well... we may...uh. Oh hell, I haven't had my period." Rebecca said in a rush. "I didn't even realize until I picked up a box of tampons."

Daryl was staring blankly at the rows of brightly colored boxes.

"It could be a lot of things, though. Like stress, or malnutrition, or-"

"Or you could be pregnant."

Rebecca blew out a breath. "Yeah."

"With a baby."

"...Yeah?" Rebecca was feeling a little queasy.

"A baby."

And Rebecca lost what was left in her stomach all over Daryl's boots.


End file.
